The Martians(15)

For the first time, they asked Eileen questions about her area of expertise. Was it true that the southern highlands now held the crust of both primeval hemispheres? Did the straight line of the three great Tharsis volcanoes indicate a hot spot in the mantle? Sunday paper areology again, but Eileen answered as best she could. Roger appeared to be listening.

“Do you think there'll ever be a marsquake we can actually feel?” he asked with a grin.

The others laughed, and Eileen felt herself blush. It was a common jest; sure enough, he followed it up: “You sure you seismologists aren't just inventing these marsquakes to keep yourselves in employment?”

“You're out here enough,” she replied. “One of these days a fault will open up and swallow you.”

“She hopes,” Ivan said. The sniping between them had of course not gone unnoticed.

“So you think I might actually feel a quake someday,” Roger said.

“Sure. There's thousands every day, you know.”

“But that's because your seismographs register every footstep on the planet. I mean, a big one?”

“Of course. I can't think of anyone who deserves a shaking more.”

“Might even have to use the Richter scale, eh?”

Now that was unfair, because the Harrow scale was necessary to make finer distinctions between low-intensity quakes. But later in the same conversation, she got hers back. Cheryl and Mrs. Mitsumu were asking Roger about where he had traveled before in his work, how many expeditions he had guided and the like. “I'm a canyon guide,” he replied at one point.

“So when will you graduate to Marineris?” Eileen asked.

“Graduate?”

“Sure, isn't Marineris the ultimate goal of every canyon man?”

“Well, to a certain extent—”

“You'd better get assigned there in a hurry, hadn't you—I hear it takes a whole lifetime to learn those canyons.” Roger looked to be about forty.

“Oh not for our Roger,” Mrs. Mitsumu said, joining in the ribbing.

“No one ever learns Marineris,” Roger protested. “It's eight thousand kilometers long, with hundreds of side canyons—”

“What about Gustafsen?” Eileen said. “I thought he and a couple others knew every inch of it.”

“Well . . .”

“Better start working on that transfer.”

“Well, I'm a Tharsis fan myself,” he explained, in a tone so apologetic that the whole group burst out laughing. Eileen smiled at him and went to get some tea started.

After the tea was distributed, John and Ivan turned the conversation to another favorite topic, the terraforming of the canyons. “This system would be as beautiful as Lazuli,” John said. “Can you imagine water running down the drops we took today? Tundra grass everywhere, finches in the air, little horned toads down in the cracks . . . alpine flowers to give it some color.”

“Yes, it will be exquisite,” Ivan agreed. With the same material that made their tent, several canyons and craters had been domed, and thin cold air pumped beneath, allowing arctic and alpine life to exist. Lazuli was the greatest of these terraria, but many more were springing up.

“Unnh,” Roger muttered.

“You don't agree?” Ivan asked.

Roger shook his head. “The best you can do is make an imitation Earth. That's not what Mars is for. Since we're on Mars, we should adjust to what it is, and enjoy it for that.”

“Oh but there will always be natural canyons and mountains,” John said. “There's as much land surface on Mars as on Earth, right?”

“Just barely.”

“So with all that land, it will take centuries for it all to be terraformed. In this gravity, maybe never. But centuries, at least.”

“Yes, but that's the direction it's headed,” Roger said. “If they start orbiting mirrors and blowing open volcanoes to provide gases, they'll change the whole surface.”

“But wouldn't that be marvelous!” Ivan said.

“You don't seriously object to making life on the open surface possible, do you?” Mrs. Mitsumu asked.

Roger shrugged. “I like it the way it is.”

John and the rest continued to discuss the considerable problems of terraforming, and after a bit Roger got up and went to bed. An hour later Eileen got up to do the same, and the others followed her, brushing teeth, visiting the latrine, talking more. . . . Long after the others had settled down, Eileen stood under one edge of the tent dome, looking up at the stars. There near Scorpio, as a high evening star, was the Earth, a distinctly bluish point, accompanied by its fainter companion the moon. A double planet of resonant beauty in the host of constellations. Tonight it gave her an inexplicable yearning to see it, to stand on it.